The Peninsula Wins the 2021 Community Open Space Big Apple Brownfield Award

The Peninsula Wins the 2021 Community Open Space Big Apple Brownfield Award

NEW YORK, NY, June 18, 2021 — The NYC Brownfield Partnership’s Big Apple Brownfield Awards promote excellence in brownfield redevelopment by honoring successful brownfield projects in New York City.

The 2021 Big Apple Brownfield Award for Community Open Space was presented to The Peninsula located in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx. The project team, comprised of Gilbane Development Company, Hudson Companies, MHANY Management, Inc., WXY Architecture + Urban Design and Body Lawson Associates, Schnapf LLC, and Roux Environmental Engineering and Geology, P.P.C. redeveloped a former juvenile detention center into The Peninsula. The project went through the New York State Department of Environmental Conservations’ Brownfield Cleanup Program (NYSDEC BCP) to address issues such as historic fill and leaking underground storage tanks.

The Peninsula is a vibrant, mixed-use campus and artisinal food manufacturing cluster that features a health and wellness center, fresh food grocer, and film production studio, affordable housing and a live-work community for the South Bronx tech and creative sectors.

The design incorporates approximately 52,000 square feet of publicly accessible open space in an interior public plaza throughout the campus which provides common areas for people of the community to gather and connect in the Hunts Point neighborhood, a community that was previously lacking accessible outdoor areas. Approximately 5,000 square feet of the open-air space will be utilized as a private outdoor play area specifically for a daycare facility. The development plan includes walkways, benches, fountains and other public greenspace as well as an open space incorporated within the plaza. The Peninsula was developed near the Julio Carballo Fields and Hunt’s Point Recreation Center to the northeast in order to provide a seamless passageway between community interaction space in the newly developed public plaza and existing recreational space within the community.